Coxswain

The one at the helm, who steers the boat and keeps the crew in time.

Coxswain is a two-panel file manager in the Norton Commander tradition, built for developers. It comes as a terminal app (coxswain, Rust and Ratatui) and a desktop app (coxswain-gui, Tauri and Svelte 5), both on one shared Rust core and one config file. It finds any file by its name, its text or what it is about, previews over 60 kinds of file, opens archives like folders, shows git in every panel, and keeps everything on your machine.

The desktop app in Cyber, its default. Seventeen more themes are one F9 away, from Norton Commander blue to Windows 95 and Mac OS 9.

Highlights

• Norton Commander at heart: two panels, the F-key bar, a command line and NC's keys. Panels and keys
• Find by name, text or meaning: Ctrl+F, and Tab goes deeper, from every name on the machine to what a file is about. Search
• Ask your files: a question in your own words, answered by your own chat model from the closest passages, with numbered sources. Ask
• Search by meaning, in any language: a small model on your machine, or your own Ollama, Lemonade or OpenAI-style server. Search by meaning
• See before you open: code, Markdown, PDF, Word, PowerPoint, spreadsheets, SQLite, HTML, fonts, video and more. The preview pane
• Builds what needs building: LaTeX, Office, PlantUML and Graphviz previews, with your tools or a sealed container. LaTeX · Tools
• Reads cryptography bills of materials: a CycloneDX CBOM as a rated tree or sunburst, compared with last month's scan, in both apps. CBOMs
• Archives are folders: zip, 7z and tar (gz, bz2, xz, zst): go in, copy, move, rename, pack, with passwords. Archives
• Git in every panel: branch, ahead and behind, counts and a glyph per file. Git
• Folder sizes without asking, instant in your home folder. Folder sizes
• Finds duplicates by content across folders and disks, and marks the extra copies by rule. Duplicates
• Eighteen themes with the looks of their era, and 18 languages, Hebrew right to left. Themes · Languages
• Nothing leaves your machine unless you ask for it. Privacy

The terminal app	Find file, inside files
The preview pane	Archives as folders

Install

Downloads are on the releases page. The builds are not code-signed: on Windows click More info and Run anyway; on macOS, if the app "is damaged", run xattr -cr /Applications/Coxswain.app once (the cask does it for you). Both apps check once a day for a newer release and give the exact update command (Update checks). Every way to install and update, and building from source: install/INSTALL.md. Git glyphs want a Nerd Font; without one set glyphs = "ascii" (Glyphs and fonts).

First steps

1. Start it in a folder: coxswain (or cox) in a terminal, or coxswain-gui. Two folders open the two panels: coxswain ~/src ~/Downloads.
2. Move with the arrows, Enter opens (a folder, or an archive), Backspace goes up, Tab switches panels.
3. Mark with Insert, then F5 copies or F6 moves to the other panel. F8 moves to the trash, F7 makes a folder.
4. Find anything with Ctrl+F; Tab looks deeper.
5. Type a command and press Enter: it runs in the panel's folder.
6. In the desktop app, Space shows the preview pane and Ctrl+, opens Settings.
7. Forgot a key? F9 lists every command, and F1 shows your keys.

More in Panels and keys and Every default key.

Documentation

The docs index is the full map; every feature has its own page with the keys, what you see, the settings, and the questions people ask.

Layout

crates/coxswain-core   config, fs ops, archives, git status, search index and store, duplicates (shared)
crates/coxswain        terminal UI (package and binaries: coxswain, cox)
gui/                   Svelte 5 frontend
gui/src-tauri          Tauri backend (binary: coxswain-gui)

Licence

MIT

Norton Commander is a trademark of Gen Digital Inc. Coxswain is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Gen Digital.

Changelog

Newest first. Downloads for each release are on the releases page.